The Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing to target individual bishops whose pro-gay policies threaten to derail his efforts to avert schism … by withdrawing their invitations to next year’s Lambeth Conference.

I didn’t hold out much chance for this initiative. But according to the latest news Archbishop Rowan has already closed it off. For he has put himself among the “bishops whose pro-gay policies threaten to derail his efforts to avert schism” by presiding at a ‘secret’ eucharist for the Clergy Consultation, a group of lesbian and gay clergy and their partners. It had been suggested that this service had been cancelled, but in fact it went ahead at a different venue.

If Archbishop Rowan is to be consistent with his own reported position, he should withdraw his own invitation to the Lambeth Conference, or announce that he will voluntarily stay away.

There is no reference in the Bible to a diocese, border, or boundary. I have heard ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel’. We have lawyers and doctors and engineers without borders. We are launching bishops without borders.

But it is not just in Canada that bishops are soon going to be operating without borders. Last night I attended an open meeting the synod of my deanery (local group of Anglican churches) to discuss the issue of women bishops. Continue reading →

But I note that the talks from the MenMakers conference are not available online, at least not from this site. These include the second talk on which I posted, the one in which, according to Adrian, Driscoll said a single man “cannot fully reflect God”.

Unlike me, Dave has in fact listened to one of Driscoll’s talks, the one on sex. He writes:

An interesting review of Church History, more akin to the Horrible Histories genre than anything else I have heard. … This is definitely not something you want to listen to if you are a single man.

Well, in that case, as a single man, I won’t listen to it, I will just recommend that you read Dave’s not exactly positive response. “Horrible Histories” indeed! I will copy that line, to flatter Dave.

Thanks to Alastair Roberts, who was there and has presumably now transcribed a recording, we can now read what Mark Driscoll really had to say at the Edinburgh conference about God and hate, as part of his talk on the atonement. Previously we had to rely on Adrian Warnock’s summary of his words. And it turns out that Adrian’s summary was rather misleading.

I have been following, and occasionally contributing to, an interesting comment thread on Alastair Roberts’ post Does God Love or Hate You? This discussion arose out of my own post about Mark Driscoll’s teaching “God hates you”. In comments today on Alastair’s post the issue has come up of what it what it means to be “children of wrath”, the traditional wording at Ephesians 2:3.

I realised that there is something puzzling about the meaning of this phrase. This is basically a Hebrew idiom, “children of …” meaning “people characterised by …”. More fully, a literal translation is “by nature children of wrath” (RSV). TNIV interprets as “by nature deserving of wrath”. But Alastair seems to understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”.

The puzzle is what this means, especially for those who take a Calvinist position. For this phrase is a description not of unbelievers, but of the past state of the believers to whom the letter is addressed. So Calvinists, who believe that God predestined and foreknew that these people would become believers, can hardly understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”. Continue reading →

I don’t think I am actually very sophisticated, nor smart in the sense that I think they have in mind. I never used to like the French, but I have grown to appreciate them. It’s just that sometimes I wish the feelings were mutual.

But they have got me with the picture of the Eiffel Tower. Here is a real one of me near it, from last December.

I mentioned in my last post Rev David Short, Rector of of St John’s, Shaughnessy, Vancouver, and a leading member of the Anglican Network in Canada which is breaking away from the official Anglican Church of Canada. He came to Vancouver from Australia, the conservative Sydney diocese. His church is, I am told, the largest Anglican congregation in Canada, and its financial contribution, expected to be 10% of the parish income, will no doubt be important to the Network.

A reader has pointed out to me that Short holds a complementarian position and, contrary to the rules of the Anglican Church of Canada, opposes the ordination of women. This has also been mentioned in comments here, and looks like being a tricky issue for the Network. As evidence for this, I was sent a link to some of Short’s sermons, with a recommendation of the (29 minute) sermon Prime Rib on Genesis 2:18-25, from 19th October 2006, which I listened to and made a few notes on.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by this sermon. Yes, Short is complementarian, but this is the relatively acceptable face of complementarianism. Continue reading →

Dr JI Packer has given an interesting talk, entitled Global Realignment: Who We Are and Where We Stand: A Theological Perspective, to the national conference of the Anglican Network in Canada. See Packer’s outline of his talk (PDF); Chris Sugden’s report of this talk from which my quotes are taken (it is unclear whether this is an official transcript or Sugden’s notes – he was at the conference); a blogger’s incomplete notes. The “theological perspective” is in fact a defence of this Network’s decision to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and affiliate with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone (of South America).

A vicar has been banned from office for four years after having an affair with a married mother of four children.

…

However, a Church of England tribunal at Leeds Crown Court accepted the 2004 relationship was not sexual.

I am glad that firm action is taken in cases like this. But I wonder, would this have been handled similarly, with a court case and a ban from office, if this vicar had had an affair with a married father of four children? How many clergy are in fact living in gay and lesbian relationships, outside marriage, to which their bishops are turning a blind eye? Could the Church of England have one set of rules for heterosexual extra-marital relationships, even when they are “not sexual”, and another one for homosexual ones? Well, if similar action is ever taken against clergy in clandestine gay or lesbian relationships, they can hardly claim that they have been discriminated against.

Many of you will remember the controversy generated by Adrian Warnock’s interview of Wayne Grudem. The hundreds of comments posted there are in danger of being lost because of Adrian’s change of comment policy. Here I am rescuing them, and other comments from December 2006, for posterity. Unlike my previous set of comments from Adrian’s blog, I am doing these in chronological order. Again I intend to include the comments on every post which has any comments – in fact that is all of his posts in that period when he was only starting to moderate comments. But this of course excludes any posts which Adrian has already deleted, and from what I remember there were quite a few of them in that month of controversy.